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I swear, you can predict the quality of a law as the inverse of how good the name sounds.

If this law were going to limit sex trafficking, it would have a name like "Revisions to the Prosecution of Certain Interstate Crimes". But no, it's got a big, gaudy name that poisons the well on any opposition whatsoever. So, predictably, it will either endanger innocents or restrict basic rights. It's like god damn clockwork.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15152204

Der offenbare Widerspruch zwischen einer Geheimgesellschaft und einer Massenorganisation verliert jede Bedeutung angesichts der Tatsache, daß die den Geheimgesellschaften eigene Struktur die Möglichkeit bot, die totalitäre Dichotomie zwischen der eigenen Bewegung und der gesamten Außenwelt, welche ihrerseits auf der blinden Feindseligkeit der Massen gegen den gesamten Bestand des Bestehenden, ohne Ansehen irgendwelcher Nuancen und Differenzierungen, beruhte, zu einem organisatorischen Prinzip zu machen. Eine Organisation, die nach dem Prinzip aufgebaut ist "Wer nicht eingeschlossen ist, ist ausgeschlossen", "Wer nicht für mich ist, ist wider mich", raubt der Welt jene wirklich existierende Mannigfaltigkeit, die für Massen, die in ihr ihren Platz und damit ihre Orientierungsmöglichkeit verloren haben, nur verwirrend und sogar untragbar ist. Die Aufteilung zwischen "uns" und allen anderen flößt diesen Massen die gleiche uneingeschränkte Loyalität ein wie den Gliedern geheimer Gesellschaften das Geheimnis selbst, in das sie eingeweiht sind. Jede totalitäre Bewegung behauptet, daß außerhalb von ihr alle Wirklichkeit "absterbe", eine Behauptung, die dann unter den mörderischen Bedingungen totaler Herrschaft sich sehr drastisch bewahrheiten; im Stadium vor der Machtergreifung gibt keine andere Behauptung den Massen, die ja vor ihrer eigenen, unverschuldeten Direktionslosigkeit und Desintegration in das fiktive Heim der Bewegungen geflohen sind, einen so handgreiflichen Trost und eine so einleuchtende Hoffnung.

Hannah Arendt

"Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft", S. 563 f.

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case. A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being.

It is quite true that the intelligence of the philosophical radicals was very limited. It is, I think, undeniable that the best men of the present day have a wider and truer outlook, but the best men of that day had influence, while the best men of this are impotent spectators. Perhaps we shall have to realise that scepticism and intellectual individualism are luxuries which in our tragic age must be forgone, and if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervour which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.

Bertrand Russell

"The Triumph of Stupidity"

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Noam Chomsky

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pick any problem our country faces. At some point it will intersect with Walmart. Whether it's gun violence, a widening economic gap, environmental issues, outsourcing manufacturing, lack of health care access etc. Walmart is right there on the wrong side of history.

Eddie Colla

http://www.dailykos.com/s ... or-profit-Artist-Responds

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

H. L. Mencken

Suffering is not the source of creativity. The desire to escape suffering is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ ... d_and_aggression/etx8cm6/

When books or pictures in reproduction are thrown on the market cheaply and attain huge sales, this does not affect the nature of the objects in question. But their nature is affected when these objects themselves are changed rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in reproduction, or in preparation for the movies. This does not mean that culture spreads to the masses, but that culture is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment.

The result of this is not disintegration but decay, and those who actively promote it are not the Tin Pan Alley composers but a special kind of intellectuals, often well read and well informed, whose sole function is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to persuade the masses that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and perhaps educational as well. There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.

Hannah Arendt

"The Crisis in Culture - Its Social and Its Political Significance"

They're torturing millions of Muslims in Xinjiang, directly or indirectly through terrifying police state actions that entirely revoke all human liberty.

There is no greater mass atrocity going on anywhere on earth than what's happening in Xinjiang.

How many people, companies, VC firms in Silicon Valley are working with China and living off of Chinese money?

Where's the mass outrage and suspension of relations with China? Nope, you won't see that. No chance in hell.

The millions of Muslims in China being tortured don't matter, and one journalist does? Not exactly: it's because China is a big fat platter of money and many want to feast on it. It's a willingness to disregard all ethics because the check is big enough. It's so much money, the people that claim to care about a single journalist, don't care about millions of people being actively repressed and tortured.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199634

Think deeply about things. Don’t just go along because that’s the way things are or that’s what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think.

Aaron Swartz

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Henry David Thoreau

This kinda makes me want to have 100% surveillance on the internet so sick fucks like these have it a lot more difficult to spread their videos. But at he same time we need freedom, so it’s a difficult topic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ ... a_gives_her_hell/ezafv86/

He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him making him smile.

Stephen King

"The Stand"

I guess I should add my own story - when I was in high school, this army recruiter gave a talk to our class. What follows is a paraphrase of his speech:

"How many of you support the war in Iraq?"

no one raises hand

"What about Hitler? Saddam Hussein is doing the same things Hitler did to his own people. So If you oppose the war in Iraq, you support Hitler!"

None of us quite had the nerve to speak up about it, but if you listened closely, you could hear the sound of a thousand little bullshit detectors going off.

http://www.reddit.com/r/A ... teacher_ever_told/cd2hciu

Within the affluent democracy, the affluent discussion prevails, and within the established framework, it is tolerant to a large extent. All points of view can be heard: the Communist and the Fascist, the Left and the Right, the white and the Negro, the crusaders for armament and for disarmament. Moreover, in endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda rides along with education, truth with falsehood. This pure toleration of sense and nonsense is justified by the democratic argument that nobody, neither group nor individual, is in possession of the truth and capable of defining what is right and wrong, good and bad. Therefore, all contesting opinions must be submitted to 'the people' for its deliberation and choice. But I have already suggested that the democratic argument implies a necessary condition, namely, that the people must be capable of deliberating and choosing on the basis of knowledge, that they must have access to authentic information, and that, on this. basis, their evaluation must be the result of autonomous thought.

Herbert Marcuse

"Repressive Tolerance" (1965)

This is what happens when academics want to get on the juicy lecture circuit and seduce starry-eyed graduate students.

Hell no. There are no academics in the sovereign citizen/freeman movement.

That is what happens when people who are down in the pecking order first see rich people doing whatever they want and getting away with it, and then someone comes and tells them that they too can do whatever as long as they follow these simple steps.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ ... ive_her_my_house/enqjwdc/